How To: Extract first three characters of a text field

Question

Greetings --
What is the best method for extracting the first three
letters of a text field?
I need to extract the first three letters of a text field (in
this case Last Name),
so I add it to other components so as to create an
identification number for
a person.
This identification number that needs to be created is
comprised of the
person's date of birth, last 4 numbers of the social security
number and
the the first three letters of the person's last name.
Example:
==> Birthdate: 11/15/45
==> Last 4 SSN: 6654
==> Last Name: Smith
ID Number would be:
==> 1115456654SMI
Leonard B

Answer 1

That should do the trick:
I put your values in variable, just replace the names, as
needed
<cfset birthdate = "11/15/45">
<cfset ssn = "41646562121216654">
<cfset lastname = "Smith">
This deletes all the / from your birthday string (if it is a
string!) and puts it into the id variable:
<cfset id = replace(birthdate, "/", "", "All")>
This takes the last 4 letters/digits of your social security
number string and adds it to the id:
<cfset id = id & right(ssn,4)>
This takes the first thre letters/digits from your last name
variable, puts it in upper case and adds it to the id string
<cfset id = id & ucase(left(lastname,3))>
Hope it helps.